Jonah and the Big City

Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you."

Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very important city — a visit required three days. On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned." The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh:

"By the decree of the king and his nobles:

Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish."

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

Many stories have surfaced about modern Jonahs, but the best known is that of a sailor named James Bartley. Bartley was aboard the whaler Star of the East on February 1891, near the Falkland Islands when a lookout spotted a sperm whale. Two boats were launched: one succeeded in harpooning the whale, but the second was capsized by the whale's tail and its crew tossed into the water. One man drowned. Bartley could not be found. He was presumed dead.

The crew hauled he whale aboard ship and proceeded to butcher it. The next morning, they wer surprised to see signs of life inside the whale's stomach. Inside was Bartley. For two weeks he was a raving lunatic, but by the end of the third week he'd fully recovered.

Bartley recalled being swallowed by a great darkness, then slipping along a smooth passage until he came to a larger space. He could breathe, but eventually he passed out. The only lasting effect that the skin of his face, neck, and hands was bleached to the color of parchment by the whale's gastric juices. Some versions of the story report that all the hair on his body had dissolved.

The story of James Bartley may be just a legend of the sea, but what I find interesting is the description of what a man might look like who has been soaking in fish guts. It helps us imagine how Jonah might have looked after three days. He would scarcely look human. No doubt people would think that the arrival of such a person to be an evil portent.

This may help us understand the central miracle in the book—not the whale, but the redemption of Ninevah-- the greatest city of it's time, through a little man who did not want to be there.

This was not the first time Ninevah tangled with the true God. Senaccharib, king of Ninevah invaded Israel and Judah with an army of 185,000 and almost destroyed both countries. Only Jerusalem was left. King Hezekiah, and the prophet Isaiah prayed for God to deliver them. Then God miraculously destroyed Sennacharib's army. Suddenly overnight the army disappeared.

If Ninevah's army had not be obliterated by the power of God, they would not have received Jonah's message. If Jonah had not given his message, they would never have connected their defeat to the hand of God. IF Jonah had not been bleached by a whale's intestine, they never would have believed that this was a supernatural visitation. They would have gone on in their arrogance and been destroyed.

Jonah walked into Ninevah declared that in forty days the city would be destroyed. The soldiers by the gate, the merchants in the square, the beggars on the street, and everyone from beggar to king fell down in awe before this apparition. The king got down off his throne and repented in sackcloth and ashes. And disaster was avoided.

As we think about this story four questions come to mind:

• What is God doing?
• Why give Ninevah a chance?
• Why choose Jonah?
• And what does any of this have to do with us?

To answer these questions, let's look at the story from God's side.

God's purpose was to display his glory and power. God wanted the whole world to know He is God.. He wants the whole world to know His power.

God could do this by working uncontested miracles every few days.. But God created the earth to run without his constant interference. His interventions are usually subtle and unseen. But if we look far enough and hard enough we can find them.

His usual method of working is to start a series of circumstances in motion that will produce an expected end. Like a chess player, God plans several moves ahead, to bring His purposes. What could He do to cause Ninevah to glorify him? If God could bring Ninevah to its knees,, what would better glorify Him than that?

So how does He do it? First, he brings Ninevah's army to Jerusalem. Then he destroys their army. Finally, He sends Jonah to tell who did it.

Why Jonah? Because He resisted God at every turn. He hated Ninevah. If God wanted to get all the credit, who better to send than a man like Jonah? That's a challenge!

Kindness would not cause Ninevah to repent. They needed hellfire and damnation. So who better to deliver that kind of rough treatment that someone who wished to see them destroyed. What better way to prepare Jonah for the job than to bleach his flesh and give him an incredible story.

Every day, you are living out God's story for you. It is not God's purpose to make your story perfect, but to make it glorious. How glorious is a story that goes "once upon a time, they lived happily ever after?" A story involves failures and reversals. Only in the end does victory come.

A smooth, uneventful story, where nothing happened would be easy to construct. But a story where there is chaos and confusion, rebellion and resistance, but eventually ends in victory, is considerabley more difficult to construct.

Years before Jonah put out to sea, God went down into the depths of the Atlantic. He made a sea monster, a unique creature, big enough to swallow a man, yet with an air compartment in its belly.

Years ago, God made Jonah. He made him stubborn and hateful, yet honest and powerful in speech. Only God could take that lump of flesh and fashion him into a mouthpiece for God.

Decades before, God made Ninevah for His own glory He made it strong and powerful so He could cut it down to size.

God made a whale. God made Jonah. God made Ninevah--all for His glory.

For the same reason he made you and I. It is not our strengths that bring glory to God; neither is it our weaknesses. It is our strengths and weaknesses together. God prepares us for the plan He His plan. God loves us for our strengths, He loves us for our weaknesses, too. If we were perfect, we would get the glory. But since we are not, God gets the glory whenever we do something right.

Think about the lowly termite. The termite is very weak. If it is out in the open, it will die quickly. It has more natural enemies than practically everything else. There is not a burd or a lizard anywhere that does not enjoy a tasty termite.

But God created the termite with the power to eat wood. This is a problem for us who live in wooden houses. But to the rest of nature, a termite is a blessing. It reduces trees to dirt so other plants can grow. Without him, the forest would not survive. He is the way God made him.

Think about Jesus. He was born with every disadvantage. He was born in a working class home in an out-of=the-way village in Galilee. Jewish leaders despised him. Romans were suspicious of him. The people were disappointed in Him when they started listening to the demands he placed on their lives. His career ended in his early thirties, with an unjust trial and a painful execution. No one should have remembered him. But Jesus became the cornerstone of all history after him. He had just the right strengths and just the right disadvantages to make him the most important person of all time. Because of God's great love, he became the redemption of the world.

Have you ever thought what a hand God has upon your life? Have you wondered why you had go what you have been through? It is a preparation. God has brought you into this world for a purpose. He has saved you for a purpose. God has ordered the world around you in such a way that it would bring glory to Him.

God is writing our story so others will read it. The end of the story is always the same—God gets the glory. Your problems are part of a plan. They are not random. God will finish that plan in His good time, and God will be glorified.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is more than just an act of love. Thanksgiving is love. It is the fabric of the communal experience that holds us together.

Think about a football game. When a quarterback makes a touchdown, one side stands up and cheers. They are giving thanks. True, they are led by girls in short skirts instead of ministers in robes, but the action is the same. Those who are fans of one side rejoice. Their affection for one side, expressed in gratitude for their successes, is the common experience that makes them one. This support of one side might be the only thing that holds them together, but that is enough.

Think about a family saying grace in a restaurant. What distinguishes them from the other diners? Simply that they gave public thanks for the meal. The act of giving thanks in sincerity is enough to make them all one.

Unity comes about through common experience experienced with the same emotions. We are held together by love, hate, lust, or desire, but in this we are one. Mostly, though it is what we are thankful for that makes us one.

I think we could make a case for saying that the act of giving thanks to each other brings us together. AS we express thanks for another, we are accepting them as one. Together we become one family, one circle of friends, or one people. The more thankful we are, the more we will express it. The more we express it, the more thankful we become.

Thankfulness to god is especially important. When we give thanks to God, we acknowledge the rightness of the world. We declare ourselves in harmony with the Creator. We cannot grumble or complain that the world is not to our liking when we thank God for what he is done.

So this next week, let's thank God for our blessing. But let's also give thanks to one another for the blessings we have received. This will strengthen our bonds with each other, and make us more truly a family, a nation, and a harmonious society.

Jonah, a Tale of the Sea

This is the story of Jonah the prophet.

Now, you might wonder, how does a person become a prophet? Did he go to prophet school? Did he get a degree in propheting? Did he just wake up one day and say "I think I'll a prophet for a while."

The truth is there was not one way to be a prophet. There were all kinds of prophets. There were prophets who lived in caves in the wilderness. There were prophets who lived in the palace of kings/ There were also ordinary people, going about their business, who suddenly hear God's voice, and—often reluctantly—become prophets.

A prophet can be me. A prophet can just as easily be you.

We cannot be sure what kind Jonah was. But from all we can read, Jonah was probably one of the "ordinary" kinds of prophets. He is not called a prophet. He is just a man who was given a word to deliver from God.

And Jonah hated it! He was bound and determined to do anything in his power to get out of going.

Now, you may wonder what was so loathsome about this calling that Jonah would go to such great lengths to get away. If we read Jonah casually we might think that it was just too hard to go, that it was the disruption of his life that caused him to run. But this wasn't the case..

Jonah just hated Ninevites.

And Jonah had good reason to do so.

Ninevah was the capitol of the Assyrian empire. The Assyrians were among the most brutal, sadistic, and loathsome people God ever put on earth. The Assyrians were the first empire to set their sights on conquering the world. In the year 721, an Assyrian king by the name of Sargon II captured the northern kingdom of Israel and deported 28,000 of their leaders—anybody who was anybody, out of Israel, effectively destroying the northern kingdom/ In 708 B. C., his son and successor, Sennacharib, almost destroyed the southern kingdom of Judah, being stopped at the very gates of Jerusalem. Before their armies, Israel was a green and beautiful land. Behind their armies, is was a smoking ruin. They destroyed everything in their path.

Jonah was probably an eyewitness to this. He saw what the Assyrians had done. He had friends and relatives who were slaughtered by the Assyrians. There is little doubt that Jonah wanted to burn the homes and gouge out the eyes of each and every Assyrian he saw. To him, the only good Assyrian was a dead Assyrian.

And now, God was telling him to go to Ninevah and preach to them.

At first, this sounds like a good idea. Who would not like to tell off that bully who bullied you in high school, or to give that straying husband who hurt you a severe tongue lashing. We think we'd like to do that sometimes, but we don't The truth is, when there is someone we hate, we don't yell at them. We avoid them. Their very presence is loathsome. It is an offense. Besides, we would rather keep all that anger inside us than to let it out. We can look so polite when it is bottled up inside, but inside we are angry cauldrons.

Jonah was like that. He didn't want to go to Ninevah and preach to them. He never wanted to see another Ninevite. So Jonah ran away. It must have cost him a fortune, but he ran to Tyre and booked passage on a Phonecian ship.

Why a Phonecian ship? Because of all the people in the ancient world, the Phonecians were the best sailors. They sailed to England and Africa. It is believed that some of them actually made it as far as America. If you wanted to to the utter end of the world, the Phonecians were the people to see. They had been there and back.

So, what was Jonah running from? God, certainly. But Jonah wasn't just running from God. He was running from the Word of God. If God had never spoken to him, Jonah would not have run.

So it is with us. We can come to church and sit in the pews or stand in the pulpit, and sing God's praises. We can say grace at meals and say our prayers at night, and feel perfectly comfortable and restful. That is because we do not hear th voice of God talking back to us. We only hear part of what God is saying. We hear Him when he whispers comfort in our ear. We hear him when He makes wonderful promises. But when God wants something back, something that we don't want to give, we run for the nearest exit.

That's the problem with God. Sooner or later, he asks for something. Some people he asks for money. Other people he asks them to sacrifice their time. God asked Jonah for something harder to give than either time or money.

God said to Jonah, "Give me your hate."

God whispered it to Jonah. Jonah ignored it. God spoke to Jonah Jonah ignored it. Then God shouted to Jonah, and Jonah could not shut our those cries, not even if he put cotton over his ears and hid his head under the pillow. He could not get away from the call of God 'Give me your hate."

So Jonah ran from God. He ran as far as he could from the presence of God.

Back in those days, people had a limited understanding of God. Many believed that God was just the God of the Jews. He was all powerful, but he was local. So Jonah reasoned that if he could run away from Israel he could run away from God, and God would stop shouting in his ear.

Many of us try the same. We try drowning out the voice of God. It doesn't work. We make fun of God and curse him, thinking that He will let us go. We lose ourselves in pleasure, in work, or in art. It doesn't work. The Hound of Heaven is on our trail, and he will not let us go.

Jonah disguised himself. He booked passage in a boat leaving Tyre. We do not know where the boat was headed—Spain or Carthage or even England. It does not matter, because Jonah never got there. Before they were many miles out to sea, a storm arose around him.

Whenever a person went to sea in those days, there was a good chance that they were not coming back. The idea of facing a gale in a little wooden box was as frightening a proposition as they could imagine.. That was why they never traveled in the times of the year when storms were most common. But sometimes, an unseasonable storm would grab them and toss them around like a bull rider in a rodeo. This was one of those storms.

The sailors pulled on the ropes, It did no good. They shortened their sails. It did no good. They threw their precious cargo overboard. It did no good. They cried out to their pagan gods. It did no good. They were a doomed ship in a perfect storm.

And all the while this was happening, Jonah lay curled up below, cowering before what he alone knew was the wrath of God. Finally, the captain went down below and sought Jonah out. "How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us, and we will not perish." Everyone else called on their god, why not you, Jonah? Maybe your God can help where the others could not.

But Jonah was unmoved. He did not call on his God. He would not give up his hate.

The sailors were a superstitious crew. They thought there might be person on board who was under a curse. They cast lots to see who it was, and the lot fell upon Jonah.

Finally Jonah confessed. His God, the God who made heaven and earth, was responsible. He was running from his God. But God was not fooled, He knew exactly where Jonah was and what he was doing. Jonah told them that their only hope was to heave him over the side, like a piece of cargo.

The sailors were not cruel men. Besides, they knew that God had his hand on Jonah. The resolved to row back to shore and to let Jonah off. But Jonah did not want to go to shore. God did not want him to go to shore. Jonah asked that the throw him in the ocean.

Why was that? Because Jonah wanted to die. He would rather go to his grave than to give up his hate.

Jonah is not alone in this. Drunkards and drug addicts go to their grave with their addictions. Greedy people obsessed with sin, will die before they let go of money. People in lust will risk ruination just to sleep with someone they desire. And bigots will refuse to live in a world where the people they hate are equal to them.

The sailors prayed to God, and asked them to forgive them for what they had to do. They were not cruel men, they said. But they had no choice. Besides, Jonah would die anyway. Jonah was too much of a coward to jump over himself. So they took Jonah by the hands an the heels, gave him a swing or two, and sent Jonah flying over the bulwarks and into the water.

And as they watched him struggling in the water, they saw a great fish, as big as the boat, surface and take him in with a gulp, like a trout taking a fly.

That should have been the end of Jonah, but it was not. This was no ordinary fish. This was one whom God prepared. All that happened was part of God's plan. The running was part, the boat was part, the storm was part, and now even the fish was part of his plan. God was not going to let go of Jonah until he let go of his hatred of Assyrians.

That fish was not his end. It was his beginning. That fish was not the object of God's wrath, but of his love. The old Jonah, the hating Jonah had to die for a new Jonah to be born. Jesus would later say that as Jonah was three days and nights in the belly of the whale, so th Son of man will be three days and nights in the earth. Jonah is not about God's wrath on the sinner. It is about God's mercy on those who misuse what God gave them. God loves the Ninevites, in spite of the fact that they were cruel, murdering tyrants. But even more amazing, God loved Jonah.

You can't run away from God There's no point in trying. He always gets from you what he sets out to take. So give God your hatred. Give Him you unforgiveness and your pride. When you do, your life can at last begin again.

 

Three Minutes

Several years ago I was a volunteer hospice chaplain. One of the reasons I did so was curiosity. I wanted to know how if deathbed confessions--people who repent in their last moments—were common.
Deathbed confessions do not happen as often as we'd like to think. Most people who are running from God run to the last. Most people come in and out of conciousness at the end. Others die suddenly, without warning. Still others get only a small warning, and there is not enough time for sincere reflection.
So if you're one of those people who thinks he can get right with God at the end, after ignoring Him for a lifetime, think again! It is much more likely that you will run out of time.
Take, (for example) a drowning victim. Drowning is a process that takes about three minutes in normal temperatures. If a drowning victim falls into cold water, it triggers the "diving reflect" which slows the heart rate and allows a victim to survive up to ten minutes, but loss of consciousness results almost immediately. A drowning victim, before he passes out goes into a state of panic, desperately reaching for a path to the surface, all he can think about is getting air. It is doubtful that that moment affords us much time to think of repentance and believe.
This is the situation that faced the prophet Jonah. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach to the Assyrians. Jonah hated the Assyrians. He did not want them to be saved—he wanted them dead. Jonah resisted God literally to his last death. He jumped on a ship bound for Tarsish. When his ship started to go down, Jonah refused to call on his God, Jonah chose to die in disobedience. Jonah went over the side to die in the open sea.
Jonah had three minutes to live. The waters swirled around him, the wind howled. The waved rose like mountains over his head. He bobbed up and down, going under, hitting the surface, spitting salt water out of his lungs. He cried for help, but there was no one to hear. Only the howling wind answered him.
Then Jonah went down for the last time. His feet became entangled in seaweed. This was the end. There was no hope.
We don't know what kind of fish swallowed Jonah. The kind need not concern us. God made a big fish. That's all we need to know.
The means need not concern us. What is more important is the why. Why did God make a big fish to rescue Jonah. It would have been easier for God to make another prophet. Jonah was not the only man who could have gone to Ninevah.
But this is the mercy of God at work. He doesn't just throw people away. He uses people, even disobedient people, The point of the story is not to impress us with the anatomical particulars of sea monsters, but to show us that even at the end of live, in our last three minutes, God is still there, and we can still have hope.
As a pastor, I hear stories of near death experiences. I have heard of men dying on the battlefield being visited by angels, who told them that there was a purpose for their lives. One person told me of being in a car accident, and seeing angels in the back seat as their car flew into a ditch, and how they escaped unharmed. I have talked to people who died on an operating table, only to be brought back to earth.
This was a near-death experience. He was dead, but he was made alive.
God often does this, so often, in fact, that the one of the central rituals of our faith near death experience. Baptism is a symbol of the death and beginning. The only difference between Jonah's experience and the one who is baptized is the length of time he was under the water. He did not submit willingly, so it took him a while to fully let go of his stubbornness.
So God sometimes lets us die so that we can live. But here is the unusual part. Jonah was three days in the belly of the whale. Why? God could have just as easily removed him immediately from danger. But what was the purpose of the three days?
This is not an idle question. We face this question regularly. We have an operation, and are stuck in bed for weeks. We can't understand why we aren't getting up and doing wha we were before. We decide on the one we want to marry, but we have to wait anyway. We finally get a new job, but we have to wait for the first paycheck. It seems unfair that God would make us wait, when the solution is already at hand.
We live in a time of instant gratification. But the answers usually take longer and are harder than we ever thought. We lose one job and expect to go right into another. We lose one spouse and expect to find another right around the corner, when in reality it might take us months or years to find ourselves restored.
The book of Job is a good example. Job loses his family, his fortune, and his health then regains it all. But in between the losing and regaining are forty chapters of agony.
God left Jonah in the belly of a fish for three days and three nights for a reason. The whale's belly was a school. He was learning during this time.
First he was learning patience. Patience is the ability to wait in stillness.
Patience is not doing nothing. But what patience is is a belief that God is on the way. We do no panic in the face of a crisis. We do not decide to take matters into our own hands. If God has not given us the answer yet, he is still on our way. While we wait, we rejoice. We learn to appreciate God's presence in the stillness of the moment. Jonah sang in the belly of the whale as he waited for God's perfect time.
When a person is drowning, panic sets in. If you approach a drowning victim too early, he will drag you down with him, because he starts to strike out at anything around him, hopig to gain something to hold onto. Many potential lifesavers have been lost themselves by getting too close to a panicking victim. So we have to wait until the person drowning can no longer resist. Eventually, we get to the place where we can relax and let ourselves be saved.
He was also learning obedience. After chapter 2 Jonah never again refuses to do anything God commanded. He may complain and whine, but he learned it is foolish to resist God. First God works on his attitudes towards Him. Then he works on his attitudes towards others.
If you tell drunkard that he should not drink, he will not change. It is only when the alcoholic comes to a place where he realizes that he cannot drink. People do not change until their wills are broken. Only God in His mercy can bring us to the place of repentance.
He was also learning hope. Twice in this passage we hear Jonah talking about his hope for the future:

I said, 'I have been banished from your sight;
yet I will look again toward your holy temple. (vs. 4)

But I, with a song of thanksgiving,
will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
Salvation comes from the LORD." (vs 9)

It is strange to hear Jonah singing about the future when it is hard imagine him having a future. He was already fish food. What future could he possibly have?
Jonah should be dead already, but he is not. He has been granted life for a reason. There was a purpose God has for him. His hope for the future is based on God's work in the past.
In I Samuel 7. Israel came together to pray at a place called Mizpah. While they were there, the Philistines planned to massacre them. Before they could pounce, God send thunder, causing the Philistines to panic. He delivered them from certain defeat.
Samuel ordered that a stone be erected and called the stone "Ebenezer"—"this far has the Lord delivered us." From that time on, whenever Israel doubted God's ability to protect, they could look back and remember that at this spot, God's words rang true.
Thus far had the Lord delivered Jonah, too. In the last three minutes, he was saved from death. In three days, he was not digested. In spite of his failing and sins, God had not abandoned him. Why not believe that God has a higher calling for you, too?

A Religion of Peace?

The recent massacre at Ft. Hood should make us all concerned. This is the latest in a string of massacres perpetrated by Muslim-Americans in the name of their religion. We need to screen people of the Muslim faith in the military and at the workplace and we need to screen them now.

Major Hasan's family has said that he was a loyal American, and that he was not a radical Muslim. I know. This is what should concern us. Here was a man acting alone according to the dictates of his faith. He screamed "Allah Ackbar" "God is great" the Jihad call that has echoed down through the ages as the battle call of the "religion of peace."

Look at the religious wars fought across the world today. With the exception of the now settled conflict in Northern Ireland, where are the religious wars that do not involve Muslim. We see Muslim-Hindu violence, Muslim-Jewish violence, Muslim-Buddhist violence, and Muslim-Muslim violence. Where are the Christian-Hindu wars or the Buddhist-Jewish wars? They are so minor as to be non-existent. Yet Islam is involved in violence on every side.

I believe there are two reasons for this.

The first is the Muslim belief in unity. It is a matter of pride to Muslims that they see themselves as a single brotherhood, looking out for each other. This seems to be the case with Major Hasan. His writings indicate that we should not be fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq because a war against one Muslim is an war against all. That is not unity. This is paranoia.

The second reason is found in the nature of the Muslim idea of God. The Muslims say they have an all powerful God. Yet for some reason, these same Muslims are convinced that their God needs military assistance to accomplish His ends. Jeremiah mocked the idols of the nations by pointing out that they had to be carried from place to place. How different is it from the Muslims, who think that the honor of God must be defended by military means?

Contrary to popular thought, Jesus was not a pacifist. He said nothing against the military or the police, neither did he ever suggest that executions should not be carried. Jesus just believed that neither God nor His people needed defending by military means. He does not need us fighting for him. He fights for us. He does not need us conquering a world of which He is already Lord. That is why he told his followers to turn the other cheek. It is not because he thought that our enemies should not be punished, but that we should pity them, because it is God who does the punishing. When Major Hasan went on his rampage, somewhere in his mind he must have thought he was punishing our country for what they were doing to him and to other Muslims. He was taking upon himself a role that the Bible reserves for God alone.

All Muslims are not killers, neither are they dangerous. There are good Muslims, generous Muslims, and charitable Muslims. However I it is my opinion that they are good in spite of their religion, and not because of it.

We ought not worry about profiling. We should be careful about putting Muslims who embrace the paranoid, fortress mentality aspect of Islam in places where they care in contact with the armed forces.

I'm sure there are many Muslims who disagree with my assessment of Islam. They are more than welcome to disagree. In fact, I hope that I am wrong. But the evidence suggests that Islam is not a religion of peace with others, but of war against the world. The more Christian a person becomes, the more peaceful he becomes. The more Muslim a person becomes, the more prone to violence he seems to become.

Peaceful Muslims will disagree. Good. I hope they speak out loudly, not only to we infidels, but to their fellow Muslims and say that they really are a religion of peace, and not of violence. With every suicidal maniac who suicidally throws his life away killing others, it becomes harder to believe.